July 5, En route.

Yesterday was ridiculous.

I got off the train at about 12:20, ran out of the train station, and found a cab. A Polish guy who had been friendly in the Krakow platform was walking out behind me, and in Polish instructed the cabbie that I had 25 minutes til my flight, and the cabbie proceeded to fly through the Warsaw streets. I got to the airport at 12:39 by his clock. I ran into the terminal, looking for an Air France agent and hoping that there would be some way to hold the flight or get me on it. Instead, I found lots and lots of army men directing people out of the main terminal, blocking off access to half the space - the half including the Air France ticket office. Apparently, some jackass had left their bright blue bag in the middle of the terminal, and in these times that is a major security threat. That meant that I had to stand in the terminal and watch my flight information on the monitor go from "boarding" to "gate closed" to "departed." At that point, there was absolutely nothing to do but wait and hope there would be another flight that day.

The bomb squad came, and after about an hour and a half of walking in and out of the room and taking X-rays at various angles (with a very cool mini-X-Ray machine), this guy in full body armor cut open the bag and pulled the bag owner's belongings onto the floor. Once it was obvious that the only things in the bag were clothes and underwear, and maybe a cell phone, the space was opened up and I made it to the ticket office. There, it became clear that my ticket had actually been issued by Delta and not Air France, so the very kind Air France agent called the Delta office, and after quite a lot of holding, she told me that absolutely all of the spaces to any of the NYC airports were booked, oversold even. The earliest flight I could get on was early the next morning, and I'd have to pay a reissuing fee and the difference between that ticket and the one I already held. (Thankfully, the difference was only about $40, but the transfer fee was a painful $200. Thank you, Visa.) So, I reserved a seat on a flight out of Warsaw at 7:05am this morning, with a connecting flight to JFK, arriving at 1pm.

God, I was such a mess. I don't know why I was as upset as I was - it probably had a lot to do with the embarrassment of knowing that the entire chain of events could have been completely avoided if I'd just thought to ask the receptionist at the hostel to look over the train schedule for me, or if I'd just gotten up 10 minutes earlier. I guess it doesn't really feel like it's possible to be in this kind of situation until it actually happens. I'm frankly surprised that, with the number of times I've flown in my life, this hasn't happened before. Hopefully it'll never, ever happen again.

Anyway.

So I didn't have anywhere to stay in Warsaw, and I was being directed up and down and up again by airport people who didn't really know where the hostel information was. Finally I found the tourist information booth, and I picked up a pamphlet for the Nathan's Villa Hostel in Warsaw, the sister hostel of the place I stayed in Krakow. I called them, they had a vacancy, but the girl I talked to was new and didn't know directions from the airport. I checked my bag at the airport and called back in 10 minutes. I spoke to someone more familiar with the area, then got on the bus and went into the city center. It was about a 20 minute walk to the hostel, during which I decided to (1) make the best of the situation and enjoy my extra night in Poland, and (2) go to bed ass-early and get to the airport at least an hour and a half before the flight. So, after a shower and an e-mail checking (during which I still couldn't upload my posts, so this'll all have to be done on Wednesday when I get back to work) I walked down one of the main streets, intending to find some food and see a movie. I got waylaid by the food, though, and didn't quite make it to the theater. I went to an Irish pub (in Poland?) and had a steak and a pint and played a round of darts with the bartender, who beat me by an embarrassing amount. The pub had the interesting feature of giving out a guinness cap to anyone who drank three pints. Obviously, that wasn't going to happen in my case (I only had half of the one I ordered), but making nice with the bartender meant I walked out with a hat anyway. Jess would have really liked this place - good steak (very rare), good beer, and lots of space to sit down in big groups.

So I went back to the hostel and went upstairs to the TV room, where LOTR-Fellowship was playing on the little TV. I had forgotten what a good movie that was, and I was the only person (!) in the room who had actually read the book. The movie ended just in time for the Euro Soccer finals, Portugal v. Greece. I watched the first half and then went to bed, instructing the receptionist to give me a 4:30am wake-up poke, since there aren't any phones in the room.

Having wake-up instructions written down on a non-sticky post-it note to get up at an ungodly hour of the morning to make a flight that I'd just missed made me very paranoid, and I kept waking up pretty much every hour (this happened in Krakow, too). I didn't have a clock in my room, so when people walked into the room (it slept 6) I kept asking what time it was, and when I woke up with no one around I got out of bed and checked the time on the computer outside, and took that opportunity to remind the girl to wake me up, please. I felt like a freak, being so worried, but there was no way I could afford to miss another flight, mentally or financially. Anyway, I got woken up on time, called a taxi, and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. And now, here I am, on the second leg of the trip and about 4 hours away from JFK.

I can't wait to get home.